Home » The Israeli intelligence failure prior to October 7

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The Israeli intelligence failure prior to October 7 — 43 Comments

  1. The phenomenon of intelligence failure in war is as old as human conflict. IMO, it usually results from someone not believing (or failing to investigate) what someone else told him. It was, e.g., a major reason why the Battle of Kadesh (Hittites vs. Egyptians, 1275 BC) unfolded so chaotically and unpredictably.

    See: Intelligence and Surprise Attack: Failure and Success from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 and Beyond, https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Surprise-Attack-Failure-Success/dp/B00S8J7SXC/ref=sr_1_2?Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=0&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=0&qid=1701372204&refinements=p_28%3Aintelligence+failure&s=books&sr=1-2&unfiltered=1

  2. This an excellent summary and expansion on the situation.

    I have seen the blind side, and the muted and ignored reports undermining it.

    But you have intriguingly gone wider and deeper into the reporting than anyone else, think.

  3. Caroline Glick, JNS, “Aharon Haliva has got to go. Now.
    An intelligence chief who publicly rejects the government’s characterization of a war, whose poor professional judgment led to catastrophe and who has a history of contemptuous insubordination simply cannot be trusted.”: https://www.jns.org/aharon-haliva-has-got-to-go-now/

    All of this would be bad enough. But it becomes even worse when seen in the framework of the 10-month insurgency the Israeli left waged against the Netanyahu government. That insurgency was led by Haliva’s family. His ex-wife and the mother of his children, Shira Margalit, is married to Ilan Shiloah, a senior advertising executive. Margalit and Shiloah stood behind much of the political unrest that Israel has experienced since last year. Haliva’s daughter spoke at anti-government protests. His son’s twitter feed is filled with anti-Netanyahu invective.

    And: premiere in progress — https://youtu.be/iW_RvmWdhKg?si=3pADUGcvaPQWZfDm

  4. But when people have a certain mindset and want to believe something – in this case, that Hamas had softened its hatred of Israel and its desire to obliterate Israel – it’s hard to let in contrary information, especially of such an alarmist nature.

    I’d add that there’s also the human failing of preception and precedence that came into play when these “higher-ups” dismissed this as “fantasy”. In terms of precendence, Hamas had never attempted something this bold before, and there really hadn’t been a major attack on Israel of real consequence since the 6 Day War over 50 years ago. People find it difficult to believe extreme scenarios are possible when there’s no precendence for them, or precedence within their lifetimes anyway. You can draw obvious parallels to the events leading up to 9-11. If on September 10, 2001 someone told you that a group of terrorists was going to hijack multiple commercial airliners and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Capitol, do you think it would have seemed far fetched to you at the time? I don’t know if “precedence bias” is the right term for this particular human failing or if there’s some other better term perhaps.

  5. What worries me is the question of how many predictions, like the one referred to above, are being ignored by our own government. If one percent of the millions of people pouring unimpeded across the Southern border planned to attack us, the result would be more of a disaster than occurred in Israel.

  6. Something is very rotten here.
    Something didn’t add up. Doesn’t add up.
    It was my initial—gut—reaction, though afterwards I felt a bit ashamed of it.
    Now, with all these stories coming out—terrible stories—about warning that were contemptuously disregarded, about spotters who were threatened with court martial if they pursued their warnings regarding things they were seeing with their own eyes over a period of time—it has become clear that it is not merely “the conception” (that overall excuse…providing so-called “plausible deniability”) that played a huge part in the utter and total disaster that has taken place.

    This thing seems clearly to be top down.

  7. OK, but that’s my point, I guess.
    What happened—what was allowed to happen—is MORE THAN just human nature….

    The ONLY mitigation that I might grant the perpetrators of this abject and murderous failure—of lives and of policy—is that, in pursuit of their goals (that’s right!) they never envisaged it would be as awful as it turned out to be.

    And it’s not over, not by any means.

  8. Tom Kippur War of 1973, Six Day War was 1966.

    Yom Kippur War the Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians (?) all attacked. IIRC it was a close run thing especially with the Syrians trying to breach the Goalan Heights. There were many many Israeli casualties in the tank crews, from ATGMs and multitudes of Soviet supplied tanks. Israeli Merkava tank design based on that war IIRC.

  9. sdferr’s article is quite damning. It strongly suggests that Israeli intelligence is very rotten at the top. I worry that may have happened to our CIA also.

    There was a recent news item about a high level CIA official warning subordinates not to be so public in their support of the Palestinians. Apparently, there was no concern about the actual support, just the social media publicity blowback.
    _____

    Barry got my thought out first. “rotten” “top down.” Yes, indeed.

  10. Yep, Honest A.’s on a roll!
    Israel MUST provide those whose goal is to destroy it with a better life, inducements, encouragement and—that’s right—hope for a better future.
    (Because the Palestinians sure as Hell can’t do it for themselves? Never mind that the ONLY thing that would “provide” them with a better life, inducements, encouragement and hope would be see Israel disappear. Erased. Destroyed. Or, preferable, to destroy it themselves. Talk about EXALTATION, SHEER JOY. INCREDIBLE SATISFACTION! Well…God IS Great…)

    But such a prescription is merely more “Bidenesca” BS.
    More “been there, done that”…and look how THAT turned out.
    More mealy, moldy, wormy, stale, warmed over “Oslo” (and, more recently, precisely what “Biden” advised Israel to do vis-a-vis Hamas).

    Yep, Honest A.’s on a rolllll…

  11. And going up to the next rung, Ladies and Gentlemen, we present….
    (Actually, make that “going down to the next circle of Hell”…)

  12. Blinken is a disgrace to the human race; ‘If Israel were only nicer to Palestinians (genocidal monsters) they wouldn’t act out, not that the destruction of Israel would be a bad thing….’

    Dangerous, trying to think like a Blinken and his evil ilk.

  13. Israel is no different than the USA.
    Its government is infested with people who wish its destruction; they want to fundamentally transform the nature of the nation.
    The continued existence of the USA and Israel in their exceptional albeit imperfect natures requires the elimination of these saboteurs.
    There is no shortage of shithole countries in the world. There is a very limited number of Freedom Beacons and they should and must be preserved.
    By any means necessary.

  14. “What worries me is the question of how many predictions, like the one referred to above, are being ignored by our own government. If one percent of the millions of people pouring unimpeded across the Southern border planned to attack us, the result would be more of a disaster than occurred in Israel.” Mr Bill

    Upon what basis might we assume that not to be the goal? Would not a series of horrific terrorist attacks across the nation be a perfect ‘rationale’ to declare nationwide martial law?

  15. It is easy to say ” Ahha ! ” after the fact. While the NCO should have been listened to, I can understand how there would be people who refused to see how Hamas was about to do something on a larger scale than they had been operating at. Some people are maybe just wired that way.
    Our government is basically doing the same thing now with our wide open borders.
    I think many of our people are under some kind of strong delusion. How else do you explain not just transgenders, but all the vast numbers of non transgenders that demand we validate the ” gender ideology” lies?
    Something is seriously wrong in Western Civilization.

  16. Jon baker, I think the ‘seriously something wrong’ is addressed in the KJV. It’s called the ‘reprobate mind’. Those who know, know.

  17. In quiet times, intel gets calcified, or complacent. New information which might indicate the status quo may possibly need to change encounter normal human and organizational resistance.

    Do you want to call Defcon Red when the line guys see a couple of people wandering around where they hadn’t before. Sort of behind terrain features. Looking around. Seems as if there’s an avenue of approach from this side of the near terrain feature, cover from the eas and northeast…..

    Okay. Who you going to wake up? Upset somebody’s training schedule. What they have on line this week is mostly reserves due out by Friday and emergency retention takes paperwork and a bump on the two weeks’ reserve pay. From somebody’s budget, which said somebody came close to overrunning last quarter and heard about it.

    Couple of guys wandering around with cell phones? Waving them around, as if using as cameras.

    You sure?

    That, I can see.

    When somebody says actual maneuvers with weapons, higher should go up and have a look. That didn’t happen. That’s bad.

    Dismissing reports with, so to speak, extreme prejudice looks really, really bad. As in…suspicious.

  18. I doubt any of these apparatchiks are smart enough to play the complete undergame BUT: Netanyahu’s failure to kill Hamas’ leaders in the past, coupled with his uneven handling of the invasion, means that he will be out as PM pretty soon. Which is exactly what the Israeli Left wants. If you think the current situation is bad, think what it will be like by next summer.

  19. miguel, does Magid do stand-up? “The Biden administration’s strategy for a post-war Gaza”, that’s comedy gold right there.

  20. @ IrishOtter > ” it usually results from someone not believing (or failing to investigate) what someone else told him.”

    That’s what things looked like to me after reading random news reports, and that’s the impression I still had after reading Neo’s post.
    Then I read Glick’s article (see sdferr’s link).
    CAVEAT: I did not watch the video, so may be repeating something said therein.

    What was happening, by her account, was much worse: the intelligence leaders were actively shutting down the people monitoring the situation.

    The Field Observers unit at Nahal Oz base suffered the greatest losses there during Hamas’s assault. The unit, comprising female soldiers, is responsible for monitoring the footage from security cameras along the Gaza border around the clock and alerting forces on the ground and in the intelligence community to anything suspicious.

    Days after their friends were slaughtered, raped and kidnapped, the two surviving members of the unit and a number of former members started coming forward to tell their story. In interviews with Channel 11, two women related that in the months before the invasion, they were warning it was in the works. The women saw Hamas terrorists training to take over kibbutzim and IDF bases. They watched terrorists practicing taking hostages and blowing up tanks. They saw terror commanders watching the drills. They saw spies probing the fence for weaknesses. They saw it all and reported it all.

    Rather than giving them medals, unnamed top-level officers in the intelligence corps ordered them to stop. When they continued reporting, the observers were warned that they would be disciplined and removed from the unit if they kept raising their concerns.

    The observers weren’t the only ones silenced. Rafael Hayun, a civilian hacker who monitors open intelligence networks, worked for the IDF for years. The IDF provided Hayun with equipment to monitor Hamas’s internal communications. In late 2019, Hayun began reporting on Hamas training exercises involving invading Israel, penetrating the security fence at multiple points, taking over communities, committing mass murder and kidnapping. Over time, the training became more intense and detailed. Hayun alerted the units he was working with about Hamas’s activities in real time.

    Five months before the assault, his colleagues in the IDF were ordered to seize all of his equipment and stop working with him. Around the same time, the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate Unit 8200 signals intelligence unit also stopped monitoring Hamas’s communications.

    Hayun said that his military colleagues told him the order to cut him off came from “senior leadership,” and they had no explanation for the decision. Hayun told reporters he is convinced that if he had been listening in the weeks before Oct. 7, the invasion would have been prevented.

    Hayun and the observers weren’t the only ones who recognized what Hamas was doing. As Channels 11, 12 and Haaretz all reported, a tactical intelligence NCO and Hamas expert in Unit 8200 with 20 years of experience began providing detailed reports on Hamas’s preparations for the invasion in May 2022.

    She even secured Hamas’s own training manual for the operation. She was able to get the information in front of Unit 8200’s commander and a top officer in the Southern Command. They apparently did nothing.

    Convinced by his subordinate’s reporting, her commander, an NCO with 30 years’ experience, canceled a family vacation because he heard Haliva would be visiting their base. He waylaid Haliva, and he and his subordinate presented her reports. Haliva dismissed their warnings and detailed information as hot air. Hamas, he insisted, was just pretending, to make an impression on its followers. He did not communicate her report to either the head of Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) or the IDF Chief of General Staff.

    The NCOs weren’t the only ones who saw what was happening. As Channel 11 reported on Tuesday, in May 2023, the Gaza Division’s intelligence officer created a slide presentation titled, “The Walls of Jericho,” setting out in detail how Hamas intended to bring down the security fence and invade Israel at up to 60 separate points, invade the division’s bases and enter civilian communities to commit mass murder and seize hostages.

    In a follow-up report from August, the intelligence officer even explained that Hamas intended to carry out its plan either on Shabbat or on a holiday when only a small cadre of soldiers would be on duty. His work was dismissed as unrealistic and out of line with Hamas’s true intentions by senior intelligence officers at Tel Aviv headquarters.

    How many of them were aware of the other reports, or of the suppressing of intelligence gathering?
    If they didn’t know all the fore-going, then this warning would indeed come out of nowhere, in their view, and thus be a “fantasy” instead of actionable reality.
    If they did know, then they should all be fired.
    With extreme prejudice.

    Glick then goes into the political end of the situation, which I won’t venture to plumb. However, the actions detailed here go FAR beyond just a failure to accept “New information which might indicate the status quo may possibly need to change” which will “encounter normal human and organizational resistance.” (Richard Aubrey)
    That is certainly part of the “terms of human nature.” (Neo)

    What Glick describes, as Barry said, is much more than that.
    “This thing seems clearly to be top down.”

    Worse, it was NOT from the “top” but from that layer of bureaucrats in Israel, like the ones in the US, who believe that THEY are the ones in charge of policy, rather than the elected leaders.

    Glick:

    At 4 a.m. on Oct. 7, due to warnings of increased Hamas movement near the border fence, the senior security leadership, including IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevy, Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar, Southern Command Commander Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman and Haliva’s assistant (Haliva was apparently asleep), discussed the movements and decided to go back to bed. Bar sent a small team of fighters to the border area, but that was all. The group didn’t inform the Gaza division commander, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Instead, they agreed to speak again at 8 a.m. Hamas invaded at 6:30.

  21. “When they continued reporting, the observers were warned that they would be disciplined and removed from the unit if they kept raising their concerns.”

    Had they continued and been removed, they might possibly still be alive today.

  22. @ sdferr > “Anthony Blinken is a disgrace to the United States of America”

    “Blinken doesn’t get too specific, but says Ramallah will have to undergo reforms, rid itself of corruption and promote a free press.”

    By that standard, every Democrat in DC has to stand down.
    https://notthebee.com/article/jim-jordan-just-released-the-youtube-files-showing-how-the-white-house-partnered-with-youtube-to-censor-speech

    This is just the Biden White House taking away your First Amendment rights through deceptive means, cloaking evil actions in a veneer of niceness.

    Blinken is a fitting apparatchik for the regime.
    https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2023/11/30/blinken-to-israelis-i-dont-think-you-have-the-credit-to-fight-hamas-to-finish-n595820

    Say what? As bad as we expected the Antony Blinken Lecture Tour in Jerusalem to be, even I wouldn’t have predicted that a US Secretary of State would have said this to a country victimized by a massive terror attack that killed 1400 people.

    That is, if Blinken actually told the Israelis that they don’t have enough “credit” to fight Hamas to the finish. The transcript comes from the Times of Israel, which translated it from a Hebrew transcript leaked to Israel’s Channel 12 News. Could something have gotten lost in translation? Perhaps, but it’s not the only eyebrow-raising part of the exchange, either. It begins with Blinken scolding the Israelis for fighting the war Hamas started by conducting operations where Hamas hides itself:

    That leads to Blinken’s most arrogant declaration in the transcript … assuming he actually said this. Defense minister Yoav Gallant essentially told Blinken to pound sand, and Blinken got the message loud and clear (emphasis mine):

    Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: The entire Israeli society is united behind the goal of dismantling Hamas, even if it takes months.

    Blinken: I don’t think you have the credit for that.

    Oh, really? Credit with whom, exactly? Biden? Biden and Blinken seem perfectly ready to extend an unlimited amount of credit to Hamas these days, and this is a perfect example. Blinken apparently doesn’t even bother to credit the Israelis for taking clear steps to provide aid, corridors for civilians to retreat, and using surgical operations rather than bunker-busters to destroy Hamas infrastructure co-located in civilian buildings. After five weeks of careful operations, Blinken essentially blames Israel for all civilian deaths in Gaza rather than the terrorist quasi-government that is actually violating all of the norms of armed conflict and hiding behind those civilians.

    This is the deadly double standard employed by the West that has allowed Hamas to survive in Gaza through seventeen years of warmaking. That warmaking includes, by the by, a near-constant shelling of Israeli civilians that continues even during US-brokered “cease fires.” Israel has given the US a credit line to follow this strategy on the notion that Hamas would eventually tame itself or be tamed through billions of dollars in international aid, an American strategy that backfired horrifically on October 7.

    Perhaps Blinken’s not getting the message, but it’s pretty clear to everyone else. The US no longer has the credit to impose such suicidal strategies on Israel, not the other way around. Or to put it another way: Israel isn’t about to take lessons on defending its citizens from the geniuses that abandoned 14,000 Americans to the Taliban in 2021.

    As I wrote above, that’s not the only Blinken demand that got shut down in his meeting today. Blinken insisted that Mahmoud Abbas be given control of Gaza at the earliest possible moment, and Benjamin Netanyahu essentially replied over my dead body:

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/blinken-said-to-tell-israel-to-change-strategy-for-southern-gaza-suggest-it-wont-have-months-to-win-war/

    Morrissey cites the same Magid post that Miguel pointed to earlier.
    https://www.timesofisrael.com/pas-abbas-a-liability-in-planning-for-post-war-gaza-arab-officials-say/

  23. America’s border assaults — both southern & northern — are Mayorkas & crew’s “top down” setup for terror attacks HERE.
    I’m beginning to wonder what their coming year’s calendar “highlights” look like. Who will be asleep. What plans are in place for deniability.

  24. “By that standard, every Democrat in DC has to stand down.”

    Indeed, starting with—surprise!—Honest A. himself.
    – – – – – – – –
    ‘…calendar “highlights”…’
    Indeed. (Pinup calendar, most likely….)
    And all of ’em are complicit. Each and every one…
    …whether it’s foreign policy (Honest A.), or the economy (the Wise Owlita), or the borders (My Oh Mayorkas), or the Trans onslaught (The By No Means Admirable Admiral), or the DOJ (Merrick-tricious), or the energy crisis, or the cities, or education, or DEI/DIE, or the SEC, or the Military, or the NIH/CDC, or Transportation etc…. Liars the whole lot of ’em.

    To paraphrase Dylan, the entire wretched crew is “standing naked”.

    File under: “…(We’re Only Bleeding)” sung by The “Biden”s..

  25. We were married on 10/6/73 & celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary at a Greek restaurant in Sarasota FL when the Hamas attack on Israel commenced. Now our wedding was on Yom Kippur & one of my best friends couldn’t make it for that reason. So a potential coincidence 50 years later should have ideally had some heightened scrutiny.

    I say that especially since 9/11 was on the date in 1683 when a Polish Prince thwarted the Turkish advance at the Gates of Vienna. That calendar date became repeatedly important in 2001 and thereafter. Dates are chosen to highlight issues. They don’t have to be but they are.The Israeli’s had an inkling of what was occurring and effectively ignored it. That’s a tragedy. They should have been more sensitive to bottom up information sources.

  26. I have not been able to post here due to work pressures – Israeli hi-tech, like much of the central Tel-Aviv area, is starting to return to normal as schools resume regular operation.

    1. I did not favor the cease-fire, but it progressed about as I expected – and had less of a bad effect on Israeli morale than I feared. Part of that was the obvious malice and deceit of the Palis, and the further evidence of cruelty and mistreatment that emerged.

    I was heartened that the major dailies stuck to the “we must press on” line. They also covered minor terrorist activity in the West Bank and the Golan that probably did not make it to overseas news – culminating in the shooting in Jerusalem, which probably did.

    It seems that the hostage exchange has taken the emotional wind out of the sails of the overwrought “at any cost” types and the defeatists…. many Israelis are satisfied that we have now done all we could to save these citizens, and now must move on to the next stage in this war. The Left – which typically harps on situations like this – has not really gained the leverage that it did with previous hostage situations.

    2. It is clear from local news and anecdote that Israel has devoted the ceasefire to cleaning house in the West Bank and the north – the attack in Jerusalem was one of many more minor, less successful incidents born of infectious “solidarity”, bravado, and/or desperation.

    3. I am quite willing to believe that Israeli complacence played a role in the attack, and it is clear that the higher military echelons were detached from reality and still don’t comprehend the pro-war shift in public attitude… but I am very suspicious of accusations made while battle rages.

    If this proves to be true, it will confirm those who already see this war as a bookend to 1973 – not just because Hamas picked the Gregorian date of the Yom Kippur War to launch this one.

    1973 was the first time the socialist, secular elite got cocky and thought there was a New Middle East. It blew up in their faces – and ushered in the current era of Likud governments.

    The bumper sticker for 1967 was “Hats off to the Army!”
    The bumper sticker for 1973 was “Israel Trusts in The Lord”
    The strategic failure of Yom Kippur caused domino failures in politics, media, and most especially in the social and religious areas of society: The silent majority of traditionally-minded Jewish Israelis no longer bowed to a socialist (re)vision of Israeli identity divorced from Judaism. The secular kibbutznik was joined in the pantheon of warriors by the bearded scholar-soldier of the religious-Zionist seminaries, and the long ignored Sephardic population asserted itself in music and other cultural areas.

    However, the old elite retained control of the media, judiciary, and military…

    Whatever is in store, this war has already dealt a critical blow to the remnant of the ultra-secular elite.

  27. “…The US no longer has the credit to impose such suicidal strategies on Israel…”

    Credit?
    Except that might “Biden” not have other ways to “impose” “his”, um, “helpful suggestions”?

  28. Mike K.
    How far would Israel’s Deep State go to embarrass/oust Netanyahu?
    Is this worse than they imagined? Not bad enough yet? Just fine?
    Read an alt-hist many years in which the Intel movement has been screwing us for centuries; even arranging to get Richard Lionheart shot.
    Maybe it wasn’t “alt”.

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